Monday, 22 September 2014

At some point we have all reached some kind of
impasse when writing a story. It might be a specific problem the character
finds himself facing which you can’t figure out how to resolve, or it could be a
more general structural issue and you’re not sure what should happen next.

Both of these types of problems can be sorted out
with a little patience and a moment of inspiration. You think and think and
think and then the answer comes to you. Usually. Sometimes, however, the answer
does not come. Everything you come up with seems not quite right.

When this happens you should remember two things.
First, no matter how unsolvable your problem may seem your brain has the
capacity to solve it. You know this from experience, from all the times you’ve
been in this position before (whether in writing or in real life) and you have
that eureka moment and you know exactly what to do.

And secondly, just because your brain can give
you the answer doesn’t mean it will. It’s one of those inexplicable evolutionary
traits that don’t really makes sense. Sometimes your brain just doesn’t want to
help you and needs to be poked with a stick. Well, here are some sticks to give
it a little push in the right direction.

Monday, 15 September 2014

There are basically two ways you can start a
story. You can have all guns blazing action or you can establish the ordinary
world of the character before things change.

Both approaches have their pros and cons and a
lot of it depends on various factors to do with your story and what you
consider to be right for you as a writer. But the problem comes when you show
your first chapter to someone else and they don’t react in the way you’d hoped,
making you lose confidence in what you had thought to be quite a good scene
that set things up nicely.

Questions arise such as maybe the other approach
would be better for this story, for this genre, for you as a writer. But the
truth is these are the wrong questions. So if the start of your story isn’t attracting
the kind of response you want, what are the questions you should be asking
yourself?

Monday, 8 September 2014

There comes a time when you have to face facts. You’ve tried
to convince yourself that scene where your main character goes back to her old
house and stares at it for four pages is a good scene, an important scene where
the reader learns things they need to know, but... it just isn’t a very
interesting scene.

You know this because none of the people who’ve read it have
ever said anything good about it. Quite a few have said bad things about it.
And most have not mentioned it at all. You could take their silence as a sign
they’re okay with it, but do you really want to write a story that’s just okay?